Alma 2 & 3 - When Numbers Become People

I was a bit fixated on numbers as I read Alma 2 and 3 today.

Alma was not sitting safely somewhere directing the battle. He was the chief judge and the high priest, and yet he was at the head of the Nephite army, fighting hand-to-hand with the Amlicites. Verse 18 tells us that the Lord strengthened the Nephites, and the Amlicites began to flee.

And I found myself wondering: How many people are we talking about?

Thank you, Mormon, for putting in the statistics.

The Amlicites lost 12,532 souls.

The Nephites lost 6,562 souls.

Those are just numbers until I put them somewhere I have actually been.

The Salt Lake Tabernacle holds about 3,500 people. That means the Nephites who died would nearly fill two Tabernacles. The Amlicites who died would fill about three and a half.

Together, the dead from that battle alone—19,094 people—would fill the Marriott Center at BYU.

I've sat in the Marriott Center. I can picture it full.

Now empty every seat.

Those aren't the soldiers who went into battle. Those are just the ones who didn't go home.

Suddenly Alma 2:19 carries a very different weight.

And the battle wasn't over.

The Amlicites joined forces with the Lamanites, whose numbers were described as being “as numerous almost, as it were, as the sand of the sea.” More fighting followed. Alma himself fought Amlici and killed him. Eventually the carnage became so great that the dead could no longer even be numbered.

Where did all these people come from?

Sometimes I think I still unconsciously picture the Book of Mormon as Lehi's family and their descendants wandering around in relatively small groups. But by Alma's time, roughly five centuries had passed since Lehi left Jerusalem. There were cities, governments, armies, political factions, trade, agriculture and generations upon generations of people. The people of Zarahemla had also become united with the Nephites.

These were civilizations.

Then Alma 3 makes the numbers even harder to contemplate. Women and children had also been killed.

I wrote in my margin several years ago that modern warfare often allows people to kill from a distance. Bombs fall. Missiles are launched. We hear casualty numbers on the news. 

But these people were killed with swords.

Someone had to be close enough to another human being to do it.

Perhaps that is what is shocking to me today. Mormon gives us numbers, but the gospel continually asks us to see souls.

6,562 +

12,532 =

19,094 souls

I can put those numbers into buildings and finally begin to comprehend their magnitude. But Heavenly Father didn't see two Tabernacles of Nephites and three and a half Tabernacles of Amlicites.

He saw His children.Every one of those numbers had a name. Every one had a family. Every one had a story. Every one was known to God.

Maybe that's one reason Mormon preserved the numbers.

And perhaps there is a lesson there for me when I hear numbers today—numbers of people killed in wars, displaced from their homes, caught in disasters, or simply described as statistics.

Numbers make it possible to count people.

What is sobering to me is that from a gospel point of view, these are souls; my brothers and sisters. History repeats this story over and over.